The present invention relates to a method, a system, and a recording medium to provide services in an online manner, and in particular, to a method, a system, and a recording medium to provide online services including a distributor device disposed between terminal equipment of users requesting services and a plurality of service points providing services for distributing the service requests of the users to the service points.
There has been broadly used a system in which a user accepts an online service of a financial institution via an automatic teller machine (ATM). Moreover, there is appearing a system in which a user accesses, from a personal computer (PC) which is installed in a place of a family or which is carried about as a portable unit, a service point of a financial institution to accept online services therefrom.
However, at present, the service points offer services in a time zone which matches with a time zone of on-duty hours of workers. This restricts the use of the system in holidays and at night.
According to the prior art above, there exists limitation with respect to the time zone of online services offered by the financial institution. The time zone cannot be regarded as sufficient for the user when compared with a service time zone of a convenience store or the like. Although the service time zone of the financial institution is going to be extended, it is difficult because of necessity of machine maintenance or the like that a single service point offers services for a long period of time, for example, 24 hours without interruption. Therefore, the users show a trend of use in which each user selects a service point convenient for the user from a plurality of service points having mutually different service time zones. However, it is troublesome for each user to search out an appropriate service point in consideration of business hours of the service points and to retrieve a line identifier number of a service point as a communication partner to input the number to her or his terminal equipment.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to construct an online service providing system in which the user can accept services offered, without paying attention to business hours and line identifier numbers of service points.
To achieve the object above according to the present invention, there is provided an online service providing system including terminal equipment of a user requesting a service, a computer installed at each of a plurality of service points offering services, and a distributor device intervening via a network between the terminal equipment and the computers to pass the service request from the terminal equipment to one of these computers. The distributor device includes first storage means for storing information regarding each user, second storage means for storing a service time zone of each service point, means for referencing, when a service request is received from a user, the first storage means and for determining whether or not the user is authorized to receive a service offered, means for referencing the second storage means and for selecting one of the service points currently in the service time zone, and means for relaying communication between the terminal equipment and the service point selected.
According to the present invention, there is provided a service providing method in which when a service request is received from an external device, one of a plurality of service points offering services is selected and the service request is transferred to the service point selected. The method includes the steps of storing a service time zone of each service point in storage means, referencing the storage means and selecting one of service points currently in a service time zone, and relaying the service request to the service point selected.
According to the present invention, there is provided a service providing method in which when a service request is received from terminal equipment, the service request is transferred to a service point offering services. The method includes the steps of storing, in storage means, a call identifier of each user associated with the terminal equipment and a service type available for the user with a correspondence established therebetween, determining the service type according to a call identifier received in association with a service request from the terminal equipment, and relaying the service request to a service point associated with the service type.
To achieve the object, there may be employed a program to implement the functions above or a recording media on which the program is stored.